Bronson Pinchot (aka Balki Bartokomous from Perfect Strangers) has laid into Denzel Washington — calling him “abusive” and “ungenerous” — and Tom Cruise, who he dismisses as a “bore” and “homophobic.”
In an unguarded interview with The Onion’s A.V Club, Bronson Pinchot disses Denzel, his co-star in 1996’s Courage Under Fire.
“He was really abusive to me and everybody on that movie, and his official explanation was that his character didn’t like me, but it was a dreadful experience.”
Meanwhile, Bronson describes Tom, 47, (his co-star in 1984’s Risky Business) as “the biggest bore on the face of the Earth,” adding that he made “constant homophobic comments.”
Tom’s rep rebuffs this, saying, “obviously this is so far removed from who Tom Cruise is as a person, this must have been said in jest.”
Although the Wall Street Journal approached Bronson, 50, about his comments, the character actor refuses to back down.
“I regret my choice of words there,” he writes in an email to the WSJ of his assessment of Denzel, 54, “and would like to amend my statement by saying I found his willingness to be ungenerous, unkind, knowingly hurtful both mentally and physically to myself and the crew to be the saddest misuse of stardom I have ever experienced or hope to experience.”
What about his comments about Tom? “The context of the question was, ‘how did he strike me as a person’ at a point in his career when he was a virtual unknown,” he writes.
“And my answer was that, coming straight out of the world of theater, as essentially all the supporting male actors did, where homophobic language was not heard, I remember thinking his use of it was remarkable and excessive.
“However, it is also true to say, in hindsight, that for a 20 year-old with no background in theater, such language is actually unremarkable. Which I did not know at 23.”
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Either the author of this story is deliberately trying to stir up a fake Hollywood scandal or she’s got the worst reading comprehension skills on the planet. It was not Denzel Washington that Pinchot confronted about his abusive on-set behavior. It was director Hugh Wilson on “The First Wives Club.” The comment about Washington was in an entire other section of the interview. How the author managed to confuse the two is beyond me. It’s just sloppy journalism. Pay close attention and maybe you’ll see where Pinchot referenced a second movie while talking about Washington’s behavior on Courage Under Fire -
BP: That was a low point, because Denzel Washington was behind the incredibly cowardly bullshit of “This is my character, not me.” He was really abusive to me and everybody on that movie, and his official explanation was that his character didn’t like me, but it was a dreadful experience. I spent my salary on time with my shrink just for helping me get through it, and what that led to was the very next big movie that I did. I should have said to the producers, “You get that guy in line, or I’m out of here.” Life’s too short. BUT THE NEXT MOVIE I DID, the director was getting a lot of crap from his star, and he started to take it out on me one day, and just like a German shepherd—you know when a German shepherd stands up on its hind legs and puts its paws on your shoulders?
I put my hands on his shoulders and I very gently but firmly said, “I don’t do abuse, and if you say one more word of abuse to me, I’m on a plane, and you don’t have enough money to keep me here.” And that was the end of it, and I’ve never taken abuse again. And I wasn’t vile or anything, it just ripped out of me.
This does not even rate a comment regarding Denzel Washington but Tom Cruise is a bore that I agree on.